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Naïve or Not?

Not long after President Obama’s speech at the United Nations yesterday, Robert Costa at The Corner delivered an assessment from a surprise guest, John Bolton, who coined the catchy critical phrase of the day: “A post-American speech by our first post-American president.” (Man, that is catchy.) Bolton is quoted: “It was a speech high on the personality of Barack Obama and high on multilateralism, but very short in advocating American interests.”

“It was a very naïve, Wilsonian speech, and very revealing of Obama’s foreign policy,” says Bolton. “Overall, it was so apologetic for the actions of prior administrations, in an effort to distance Obama from them, that it became yet another symbol of American weakness in the wake of the president’s decision to abandon missile sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, and his recent manifest hesitation over what to do in Afghanistan.”
“The most significant point of the speech was how the president put Israel on the chopping block in a variety of references, from calling Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegitimate to talking about ending ‘the occupation that began in 1967.’ That implies that he supports going back to 1967 borders,” says Bolton. “Obama has a very tough road ahead. He is frequently taking the side of the Palestinians, who don’t have a competent leader who can make hard decisions and compromises in the future.”

Also noteworthy, Bolton says, was how Obama highlighted “just how much of American foreign policy that he wants to run through the U.N.”

Overall this was a staggeringly naïve speech by President Obama, with Woodstock-style utterances like “I will not waver in my pursuit of peace” or “the interests of peoples and nations are shared.” All that was missing was a conga of hippies dancing through the aisles with a rousing rendition of “Kumbaya.”

The big catchphrase of the morning was “new era of engagement”, with Obama outlining the four big international pillars of his presidency: ridding the world of nuclear weapons, the pursuit of peace, preserving the planet, and supporting “a global economy that advances opportunity for all people”.

There was only brief mention in the president’s speech of the Iranian or North Korean nuclear threat, and no attempt to outline what measures would be taken against Tehran and Pyongyang if they continued to defy the UN Security Council. Obama said not a word about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s continuing threats to wipe Israel off the map, or the aspirations of the Iranian people for free and fair elections.

What we heard today was a speech deeply grounded in the reality that the most difficult global challenges we face cannot be tackled by one country acting alone. Gardiner dismisses the warm welcome received by Obama at the General Assembly as a “bad sign.” Maybe Gardiner can tell us how the United States can face down the [quadruple] threats of non-proliferation, climate change, financial catastrophe and global insecurity all on its own?

The fact is, robust cooperation on all these fronts is required to overcome these profound threats to American interests and security. Obama’s General Assembly speech reflected the world as it is — not the world that unilateralists like Gardiner would like it to be.

But Poor President Wilson gets hit with shrapnel again in Rich Lowry’s New York Post column, which takes the Obama to task for “believing ‘the interests of nations and peoples are shared.’ They aren’t.”

Even Woodrow Wilson might have blanched at the mushy-headed exhortations to world peace and collective action better suited to a college dorm-room bull session or a holiday-season Coca-Cola commercial.

“No nation can or should try to dominate another nation,” Obama intoned. “No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold.”

Has an American president ever expressed such implicit hostility toward his own nation’s pre-eminence in world affairs? Or so relished in recalling its failings, or so readily elevated himself and his own virtues over those of his country?

Of course, there is nothing more post-American than pursuing a foreign policy and national security course that alienates our allies, sends America to war under false pretenses, defies American law and embraces torture, and a generally adopts a go-it-alone mentality that flies in the face of over 200 years of Presidential leadership. Maybe Bolton can’t see President Obama’s restoration of American ideals and leadership because the President under which he served exhibited neither trait. But ostensibly, Bolton’s myopic approach to foreign policy stands at the fringe of the fringe where he has no credibility left from which to criticize any serious foreign policy experts, let alone the President.

One of the most interesting assessments came from Greg Sheridan at Real Clear Politics, who steered clear of parsing the speech and took a broader look at Obama’s true political power via that “great classic of American strategic pedagogy, ‘Happy Days.’ ”

Happy Days pivoted around the friendship between two very different American teenagers, Richie Cunningham and Fonzie Fonzarelli.

Richie was clean-cut, wholesome, an absolute goody-goody, and everybody loved him. Fonzie, especially in the early series, was a tough nut. Greased-back hair, always astride his outlaw motorbike, decked out in Marlon Brando T-shirt, Fonzie inspired fear and envy in men, and swoons among the gals.

Everyone was frightened of Fonzie. He could banish bad guys with a look. In one episode, Fonzie tried to teach Richie his style. Richie practised the grimaces, the flexes, the stares, but alas the bad guys were not impressed and certainly not deterred.

In the midst of a desperate scrape, Richie turned to Fonzie imploringly and asked: Why are my deadly looks, threatening flexes and strategic grimaces having no effect?

Oh yeah, Fonzie replied, I forgot to tell you. For all that to work, once in your life you have to have hit someone. You cannot imagine a deeper strategic insight.

At some point, Obama is going to have to do something seriously unpleasant to someone.

Peter Catapano is a staff editor in opinion. Eric Etheridge will return on Monday.

It’s becoming embarrassing to hear Obama bash America. He seems to be unaware of the damage he is causing–the whole world aren’t our friends, and his continuous apologies, bashing of our past and fuzzy and warmy approach just means our enemies smell weakness.

Tne one area that I see where he is seriously off in la-la land is the total nuclear disarmament theme. This whole topic – and yes it is EXTREMELY ugly – was well explored in Kahn’s work in the 50’s and 60’s. We seriously would not want to live in a world without nuc’s of our own. Too bad, but the technology is too well known and too easy to develop by the bad guys. We do not want to wake up one morning to a nuclear threat and we don’t have any to retaliate! MAD is why the big players haven’t been at war over the past 60+ years.

John Bolton’s credentials as qualified critic of the UN and the United States policy toward it are particularly thin, since he doesn’t believe in the UN in the first place. Maybe he and his fellow Obama critics should also weigh in on Sarah Palin’s speech in which she trashed our country. On foreign soil. During wartime.

How can anyone argue intelligently with the fact that the interests of all nations are connected? U.S. bullying and blow-harding by the likes of Bolton (a near psychopath) and the Bush-Cheney junta has clearly NOT resulted in a more peaceful or prosperous world. Obama may not be perfect but he is less dangerous, slightly, than Bush era know-nothings who see the taxpayer-supported military as the only solution to human problems.

I have heard enough, I cannot believe the amount of continued coverage of the previous administration lackeys and spokes persons continues to get in the press. Their opinions are constantly alluded to and “offered as fair and balanced” perspective. We are working our way back from the precipice on so many fronts. These include unending “conflicts”, poor esteem in the world because of bully behavior, unbelievable handling of the worlds largest economy and a lack of leadership unprecedented in my lifetime. To mention the quest for piece implying this is a weakness, where has our humanity gone? We are not using bows and arrows nor are our enemies. If we continue to view and use analogies from over 80 years ago (Wilsonians) or TV sitcoms to metaphorically describe the current world order we a slipping well beyond acceptable levels. Let’s realize we had been subjected to policies for 8 years that were childish, oversimplified and clearly not in line with establishing an America that could maintain its position in this world. It is about time that everyone stop whining and realize some hard decisions, have to be made. Let’s stop listing to those that brought us so many catastrophes’ and accept the fact that change we have not predicted will be the rule of the day. Isn’t anyone out there relieved we have a leader that can actually make sense when he speaks. Whether you agree or not this has to be a pleasant result.

I certainly don’t care what Bolton has to say. He accomplished nothing positive in his tenure and has no real substance to offer. Lets hope we can get past these has beens and soon. Lets hear constructive criticim but match it with real suggestions and there is value.

I am not sure and doubt the value of all the UN functions and would totally support a “cleaning out of the administration” but we need to have some place that allows all peoples to speak and be heard.

It is the failure of past world leaders to grasp humanity as it really is —that the People of the World need food, homes, work, medical care, clean enviornments, knowledge (education) our families, and for heaven sake’s a break from propaganda.

I think the real people of the world are all wanting our world leaders to say that these are the most important politics there are, and that they will peacefully work with the other leaders to enrich our lives. Thank you President Obama for your efforts.

Obama is turning into America’s Gorbachev: an apologizer on a worldwide charm offensive, seeking reciprocation for a series of major concessions.

Despite the praise lavished on him by non-Russians, Gorbachev was and is to this day despised in his home country for destroying its pre-eminence in the world and setting it on a downward spiral from which it will not recover.

If you believe that America is another evil empire that needs to be rolled back, cut down to size, and endlessly apologized for to its foes, then GorbyObama’s your guy.

I suspect that most Americans disagree, and will make Obama a one-term president, as Carter was.

How is this “Happy Days” comparison interesting? The idea that one must “do something seriously unpleasant to someone” in order to scare off “the bad guys” is among the more primitive and myopic defense strategies out there, one used with great desperation and cynical conviction by the Bush Administration, and one that has proved to lead down greatly dangerous and lawless paths. Pop culture references applied to politics may have an easy air of novelty to them, but they rarely do much in the way of probing or important discourse; it’ll get you a sound-byte, but not much else. This is thought at its worse, where its limitations attempt to conceal themselves through cheeky cover.

Can someone remind me again exactly why the likes of John Bolton, who boasts not a single distinguishing achievement in the whole of his career, is still being treated in news outlets like he has something substantive to offer to ANY debate? When the media accept columns from Bolton, Cheney, Gonzales et al, they can be sure all they’ll be getting is some “Obama says the sky is blue but he’s wrong” dreck. What’s the point of printing their tired boilerplate diatribes? Or, for that matter, of devoting blog space to them? I’m so tired of their juvenile hysteria since their side lost the election and fell from power.

Let’s be clear: There are really only 4 ways to get what you want in the world: Request, Deal, Manipulation and Force. THe first two allow for relationship. The last two, to the extent the maniulation is negative, destroy relationships. Obama seems to understnad that using manipulaton and force as his intial efforts makes it difficult to go back up the chain to request and dals. If we are ever going to get to a place where the world actually works, we must fnd a way to create a world in which the domination ambitions of the bad guys are blunted and the world community funcitns as a community. I really doubt that Presidnet Obama is naive. I think he’s taken a page from J F Kennedy’s book and is an “idealist. with no illusions”

I’m not surprised that John Bolton is clinging to policies that did not work––however, I’m saddened that so many others continue to support these rigid ideologies in the face of so much evidence to the contrary.

“who don’t have a competent leader who can make hard decisions and compromises in the future.”

I’m glad Bolton had the word Palestinians in front of this phrase. I was thinking that he was talking about the last eight years.

I never understand why Bolton and his ilk, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Kristol and all the others, are so convinced that we can just blow everybody to hell. I mean, have any of them actually suited up and hit the ground, grunt style?

Didn’t think so.

I like the idea of a war crime tribunal for those architects of the ‘New American Empire’, where after they are found guilty, they are suited up and dropped in the hot zone so they can put their money where their mouth is.

When one is confronted with an entreched and deranged geopolitical situation where psychosocial variables have been taken for granted for millenia and show no sign of a change to maturity, and the technological advances could easily destroy all humans, then…

Then, perhaps the best thing to do to move away from and ignore reality and try naivete. We have nothing to lose and perhaps will obtain a new strategy which might be more effective.

The major deterent is Eisenhower’s the “military-industrial-complex” of the U. S.

What was naive in Obama’s speech was a) his assumption that Iran is developing nuclear weapons when there is no evidence to support it, b) failure to mention Israel’s nukes and Israel’s systematic defiance of UN resolutions over the years condemning their breaking of international laws, equally systematically vetoed by the US.

Asia, South America, India and Pakistan are spending billions to prepare for the climate change and resource wars of the 21st century. Brazil and India just purchased nuke hunter-killer subs.
Russia is streamlining the army and navy. Mass armies will be replaced with raid deployment brigades armed with tactical nukes. The navy will scale down to a small force of nuke (Graney-class subs) and diesel subs (Lada-class subs) armed with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

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The Thread is an in-depth look at how the major news events and controversies of the day are being viewed and debated across the online spectrum. Compiled by Peter Catapano, an editor in The Times’s Opinion section, the Thread is published every Saturday in response to breaking news.